


Doors

by serialkarma



Category: The OC
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serialkarma/pseuds/serialkarma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I woke up Sunday morning and there was a random door in the middle of my hallway, and I was blindsided by this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doors

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://torchthisnow.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://torchthisnow.livejournal.com/)**torchthisnow** , who listened to me wibble my way into making almost no changes. Sometimes hand-holding is the best kind of beta.*g*
> 
> For Z., just because.

During the early years of their marriage, long after the mail truck, but not long at all after Seth, Sandy would come home in the evenings and find strange things lying about their tiny house in Berkeley. A lamp without a shade here, a pile of three mismatched suitcases there. Found objects, strays that somehow made their way to his home, that Kirsten would fuss over as though they were animals, or children. Sanding, painting, refinishing—Kirsten had a knack for making each piece look as though it had always belonged right there and nowhere else.

One evening, after a long, particularly disheartening day, Sandy walked in the front door to be confronted by--another door. Propped up against the wall in the entryway, dingy white, with a strange, slightly off-center chipped glass knob. Something about the door looked sad, wistful, as though it knew it belonged somewhere, but it wasn't exactly sure where, and it wasn't exactly sure how it had ended up here, in a house that had enough doors already.

Sandy decided it had _definitely_ been a long day--if he was anthropomorphizing doors--and went off to say hello to his family, get a beer, and find out why the hell there was a stray door in his hallway.

"It was just lying there on the side of the road," Kirsten explained as Seth--who thought he was Spider-Man this week--tried to crawl up Sandy's pantleg using his non-existent superpowers. "And I felt kind of sorry for it. It was a perfectly good door, I don't know why anyone felt the need to throw it out. I thought I could refinish it and turn it into a coffee table. What do you think?"

Sandy thought Kirsten must have had an even longer day than he had, and resolved to give her a Seth-free evening very, very soon.

The door stayed. Kirsten sanded it down, painted it an oddly appealing shade of red, and propped it on two of the mismatched suitcases in front of their (similarly rescued) futon. Sometimes Sandy looked around and felt like they were living in some weird cross between a flea market and a shelter for abused and abandoned household items. But their house radiated a warm, cozy feeling, and besides, it had cost them less than $200 to furnish, so how could he complain? Everything in their home had stories to tell--the dents in the bookcase in the corner, the scratches on the endtable next to the futon. The lamp on the table next to the armchair was shaped like a bunny--with an anarchy symbol drawn on the side in permanent marker. Sandy kind of hoped Kirsten would get around to repainting it sometime this century, except when he'd had a few beers, and then he kind of hoped she wouldn't, as it seemed a symbol of someone's (no longer his, sadly) rebellious past that ought to be kept alive. Everything in their house was old and well-loved, with the exception of Seth, who was new, but loved more than everything else put together.

Sandy felt at home in this house full of scars and stories, in a way that he never felt later on, when they'd left their small, cozy home in Berkeley and taken up residence in a brand-new, storyless house by the sea.

Until, that is, he brought home a stray of his own, who opened doors he'd forgotten to look for.

\--end--


End file.
